This became 481 words, whoa

I pressed the round 5 button and stopped to observe my surroundings: the round nubs on the floor tiles, the chrome walls which seemed to suffuse all colors and shapes until a group, meaning three or more, people standing within an elevator would appear to be a faint, pseudo-morphed globule in the reflection. (1)
From there it occurred to me how many times I have stood in an elevator exactly. Thousands, surely. We think of elevators as such an innovation, when few stop to consider the dumb waiter. (2)
I began to consider the hundreds of people I’ve never gotten to know whom I have stood beside in my various experiences in elevators, my arms condemned to stay at my sides for the sake of space, and my steps within it abridged. Conversation is ever slow to produce in elevators, usually limited to the weather and such daily happenings, as no one is in their element when they are standing two feet from a stranger.
This is, however, a contrast from other such limited situations in more open settings, in which I have spoken with people whom I have never known and never will, but thought I did at the time. (3)


(1) I have often taken an interest in reflections as a child, which began at the age of five when I came across a funhouse mirror in a doctor’s office waiting room, which tweaked my top half into a narrow, vaguely similar image, and made my bottom half appear quite bulbous. This began my musings that perhaps within us there is a person of about the same size, but what each of us sees in ourselves and others may simply be a funhouse mirror image.
This was, of course, before I knew of the ramifications of thyroid disorders, a main cause of obesity, and depression medications, which slow one’s metabolism.
(2) It has always interested me to know that dumb waiters were popularized in the early 20th century in restaurants, since we tend to think of today’s contraptions, elevators, as being motorized for our convenience.
This bring to mind the fact that car windows used to be turned by a handle, which, though less convenient, would save gas if we still used it today.
(3) This draws to my experiences of high school, in which I stood at the bus stop and each morning a middle aged fellow in my neighborhood was walking his dog, passing my stop at exactly 7:12am. This dog had been sold to him by my next door neighbor, a pleasant woman who sold insurance for a living and bred dogs as something secondary, but a love of hers nonetheless.
Each weekday we briefly spoke, of nothing in particular, sometimes simply “Good morning,” yet, there was something of a communicative bond there, simply from being within the same vicinity even on the coldest of days.